Detection of light behind a black hole a few days earlier is just the beginning, as a new discovery adds some important information about one of the biggest mysterious things in the universe i.e. Black Hole. Now scientists have caught an amazing set of concentric rings around a black hole which is continuously drawing material away from a star (having half the mass of the sun).
NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory are used for this and rings were seen around a black hole which is at a distance of 7,800 light-years from Earth. The black hole around which this happened is part of the binary system known as V404 Cygni.
Earlier in 2015, a burst of X-rays from V404 Cygni was observed by Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and it had been reported that bursts result in the formation of high-energy rings due to the phenomenon of light echoes. Light echoes were formed when X-rays bounced off the dust clouds between V404 Cygni and Earth. In 2015 between June 30 and August 25, 50 observations of the binary system had been made in which Chandra has used for observation on July 11 and 25.
Now astronomers mixed the data of X-rays from Chandra observatory with optical data from the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii (which helps to see the star in the field of view). When researchers collected data in X-ray and visible light wavelengths and combined the two into images, a series of concentric rings around a black hole having some gap because of the limitation of Chandra’s field of view observed Resulted images showed eight separate concentric rings.
NASA says, ”Every single ring is created by the X-rays from V404 Cygni flares observed in 2015 that reflect off different dust clouds”.
These rings open up new information related to the astronomers while putting light on the behavior of dark holes. Chandra scientists said,
“In addition to the information about black holes, rings also tell us about the landscape between V404 Cygni and Earth. As the diameter of rings reveals the distance to the intervening dust clouds the light ricochets off. Rings will appear larger if the cloud is nearer to the earth and vice versa. Narrow rings are because of the light echoes as the X-ray burst remains relatively for a short period.”
Astronomers noted in their research, which has been accepted into The Astrophysical Journal Letters, that dust mostly is the mixture of graphite and silicate grains and the density of dust clouds not remains the same and changes in all possible directions. Black holes are slowly and steadily unveiled by scientists and they also are in continuous search related to these cosmic bodies, so that different mysteries of the universe can be revealed.